Bloomfield: Way Better than Mike Castle

To disaffected or unsure Republicans in the 33rd Congressional District:

I am well aware of the acrimony which staunch and stalwart conservatives have about Bill Bloomfield, a Republican turned Independent from Manhattan Beach.

He supports a number of policies which I do not entirely agree with.

He wants to repeal parts of ObamaCare -- the whole thing needs to be repealed, followed by proper reforms implemented without the extra two thousand pages which no one in Congress bothered to read, but every concerned voter got their hands on.

He supports Cap and Trade -- that is a Cap on Trade, a  program that will bust a Cap on any trade in this country.

He is pro-choice and he will not stand in the way of gay marriage. He voted "No!' on Prop 8.

In many ways, he reminds me of the liberal Republican from Delaware, Mike Castle, the one at-large House Rep from the First state. He had at best a 54% rating from the American Conservative Union, which some pundits argued was too liberal, too kind an estimate. He voted against the 2009 stimulus, he voted against ObamaCare, but on almost any other issue, including the social issues, he voted in line with the liberals in Congress.

So, what makes Bill Bloomfield better than Mike Castle, since they have many of the same views?

Bill had the integrity to leave the Republican Party and run as an independent, while Mike Castles insisted on staying the GOP, yet drifted from the party's clearly outlined platform on a number of issues. Because he refused to leave the party, the party was certainly leaving him, and for that reason he lost the fraught primary in September 2010 against Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell, who was neither competent nor competitive, but gave one gift of gaffe after another up until she lost the race by ten points.

Mike Castle was the better candidate, in part because he would win, yet because he was out of step with much of the Republican brand, he faced less and less of a chance of advancing his career. Bloomfield knew when it was time to leave the GOP, and so he did.

Bloomfield -- way better than Mike Castle, just right for the 33rd Congressional District.